The Enigmatologist (25 page)

“You don’t get to put this on me,” John said. “I’m not the
one that uses people. That’s you.” The blood from the bar fight had been washed
from his fingers, but he still saw the man lying on the floor, blood seeping
between the floorboards. Without realizing it, John wiped his hand on his pants
leg. The solider next to him lightly tapped his fingers against his rifle.

“Well, Al
Leadbelly
,” Colonel
Hollister said. “I have you at last, the first one, his closest companion. It’s
been over thirty-five years since we buried Elvis and you haven’t changed a
bit.”

“Really? Thirty-five years looking like that? That’s not
really something to be proud of,” John said, cranky, like an old man on the bus
needing a nap, but not wanting to fall asleep for fear that teenagers would
draw dicks on his face.

“Did you think someone as special as you could stay
hidden? Eventually someone would take your picture, send it to Lieutenant
Grant. And we’d be on your trail again.”

“Man, I knew you couldn’t stay
away.”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, Al. I
have thirty-five years of questions and I guarantee you’re not going to like
how I ask them.”

“You might want to get in line, man. I got a few ex-wives
looking to do the exact same thing.”

“Always joking. Just like Elvis.”

“He had a great sense of humor, didn’t he?” Professor
Gentry said.

“Professor Gentry, it’s good to see you again. Elvis
really valued your insight, your trust. It’s a shame you betrayed him, sold him
out for a book deal. I’m sorry we had to discredit you. You gave us no other
choice.”

“You must not have worked that hard,” John said.

“We were all working overtime those days, trying to figure
out what happened to Elvis. How a man in his condition could die from a heart
attack.”

“His condition?” John said. “That coked-up asshole?”

Colonel Hollister backhanded John across the face. Blood
ran from the split in John’s lip, into his mouth. He leaned over. Spat. Colonel
Hollister clutched John’s hair and tilted his head back. Blood retreated back
into John’s lip. The cut sealed.

“Brilliant,” Colonel Hollister said, releasing John’s
hair, pushing his head back. “I’m glad Lieutenant Grant called you, John. I
really am. I’m going to really enjoy your autopsy findings. I’ve always been
curious about how your kind actually works.”

“It’s a healthy combination of cynicism and PBR. But
mostly PBR.”

“Do you know what it’s like to lose a child, John? Of
course not, how could you? It’s devastating, something you never get over.
You’re constantly wondering if there was something you could have done,
questioning your parenting. If I’d only been there for him. Elvis was like a
son to me.”

“Yeah,” John said, “a son on Quaaludes.”

“In some ways he was more. So, I’ve been searching for
answers,” Colonel Hollister turned to
Leadbelly
,
“searching for you.”

“Whatever answers I can give you,”
Leadbelly
said, “they won’t bring him back, man.”

“You’re right. I know. But killing John Abernathy will
help.”

“Wait. What?
Leadbelly
?” John’s
head spun between
Leadbelly
and Colonel Hollister.
John thought they only wanted
Leadbelly
, to dangle
him above a pool of bionic piranhas and question him about Elvis, but seeing
Colonel Hollister absorbing the moment, John finally understood that
Leadbelly
wasn’t their only objective.

“John, you know who you are, man,”
Leadbelly
said over his shoulder as two soldiers led him toward a Hummer.

John rubbed the top of his hand, where his bones pushed
through his skin, right before he’d punched
Leadbelly
.
It didn’t feel any different, the skin, thin hairs, the veins and ligaments. It
felt like the hand he’d used his whole life for everything from writing puzzles
to zipping up his pants to turning the pages of Archibald Abernathy’s journal.
But his hand wasn’t the same. He had watched its reconstruction, the bones
breaking through the skin, gloving it, then receding. And it wasn’t just his
hand that had adapted. When he confronted
Leadbelly
at the lumberyard, and after the bar fight, John had worried that he was becoming
something foreign and unrecognizable, but looking at his great-great-uncle
being led away in handcuffs, John knew he shouldn’t have worried, that
Leadbelly
was right. He knew who he was. He was the
descendant of Archibald Abernathy and Louisa Ramirez. Part human. Part
Sagittarian.

“Wait, I want
Leadbelly
to see
this,” Colonel Hollister said. “So he’ll remember.” Colonel Hollister motioned
to the soldiers standing next to them.

“On your knees,” a soldier, the one who had fought with
the sheriff at Levi’s, said.

“Like hell!” Sheriff Masters cried.

“I said, on your knees.” The soldier rammed the sheriff’s
lower back with the butt of his rifle, forcing him to the ground, then did the
same to Professor Gentry.

Another soldier smashed his gun into John’s shoulder,
forcing him to his knees.

“You ruptured my friend’s eye socket,” he said to John.

“You know that wasn’t me, right?” John said.

“He’ll never be able to go into the field again.”

“That was literally a whole barroom full of people.”

“Colonel Hollister wasn’t going to let me come on this
mission. He said I was too emotionally invested. I had to beg him for this
assignment.”

“I was unconscious for the whole thing.”

“I wanted to be the one that put a bullet in your head.
When I’m done with you, I’m
gonna
find your
girlfriend and do the same to her.”

The journal mentioned a town. Oscar Ramirez had taken
Archibald there. It was where he met Louisa, and a young Rosa. And John
realized that’s where Rosa went, not to Albuquerque, but to a town that had
been hidden for hundreds of years. A town where she could be safe.

“Hollister!” the sheriff shouted, offering a final
argument. “I’m the local sheriff, the law! You can’t do this!”

“I am sorry about this, Sheriff. I really am,” Colonel
Hollister said with insincere remorse. “I try to limit collateral damage, but
you see, I’m fighting a war. We’ve been invaded, attacked. There have been
casualties. I’m just trying to protect humanity.”

John calmly looked up at Colonel Hollister, adjusted his
glasses, and said evenly, “You are fucking crazy.”

The mountains were silhouetted behind them, palpable and
ominous, like a housewife’s premonition. The lights from the trucks shone in
John’s eyes. He saw outlines of the bodies of the men in front of him, and from
behind him John heard the unmistakable click of guns being cocked.

John told himself to calm down, that he could do this. It
would be just like when he punched
Leadbelly
in the
motel room. Except that had happened automatically, like a reflex. He hadn’t
willed it. But that didn’t matter. He was a Sagittarian. He could do this. He
just had to concentrate.

The men behind them slowed their breathing, detached from
the present moment.

John closed his eyes and
concentrated on how he wanted the soldiers to feel, lethargic, content,
exhausted, like taking a nap in the middle of the desert was the best idea
they’d ever had. John focused on the scents associated with those emotions. He
grimaced and grunted, focusing these precise feelings and pheromones outward,
infusing the atmosphere with the aroma of transformed awareness. Then, thinking
he’d succeeded, he sighed, and waited for the sound of unconscious bodies
collapsing.

And he waited.

And waited.

“Gentleman,” Colonel Hollister
said, his calm and pleased voice slicing the silence, “fire at will.”

John opened his eyes. Colonel
Hollister stood above him sneering, pointing a gun at John’s head.

“Oh, shit.”

At
the sight of Colonel Hollister aiming his gun at him, John knew he’d failed to
release his pheromones. He sniffed the air around them. It smelled like
gunpowder and automotive fluids and sweat, not like an enchanting aroma that
would have caused trained soldiers to slip into a wilderness snooze. John sat
back on his heels and dropped his head. His pheromones were their last hope of
leaving the desert alive. He had failed.

John gazed past the colonel, to the stars behind him. This
was the last time he’d see them. He wanted to absorb the stars, memorize their
celestial positions. He suddenly regretted not taking Constellation Cross
Stitch 203. He could have embroidered all the constellations in
glow-in-the-dark yarn and hung them from his wall.

The stars flickered yellow, then red, back and forth like
a freshly struck match. Old constellations burned.

Then they moved.

The stars moved, not straight across the sky like shooting
stars, but in bizarre, zigzag patterns, floating back and forth in pairs,
synchronized, sky-bound vessels passing, signaling. One pair, then two, then
three. They moved erratically and John lost count of how many pairs streaked
and darted above him.

And he wasn’t the only one who noticed. Colonel Hollister
yelled at his men to take cover. Soldiers ran behind Hummers, pointing their
guns skyward. Most of them had seen combat in some Middle East desert, had been
hardened by IEDs and stop-loss redeployments, but the sight of descending stars
caused them to speak to each other in hushed uncertainties. John didn’t see or
hear any of this. He kept looking up, watching the lights get larger until they
were the size of the moon.

Machineguns fired. Shells were ejected as new rounds were
pushed into the chamber, fired in a futile attempt to shoot out the stars. The
hot casings hit John’s head.

John, Sheriff Masters, and Professor Gentry fell to the
ground. The sheriff tried saying something, but John couldn’t hear him over the
gunfire. He motioned that they should get out of there. John nodded. They got
to their feet and, bent over, ran to the Humvees.

“Were you hit?” Sheriff Masters asked him when they
reached the vehicles. They crouched next to dusty doors and tires, shielded
from the chaos.

“You?” John asked, shaking his head.

“I’m good. What the hell’s going on?”

“I think it’s
Leadbelly’s
cavalry.”

The soldiers, illuminated by Humvee headlights, fired
their weapons skyward as the lights above them grew and encapsulated the
vehicles, forming a dome around them.

“Can you see
Leadbelly
?” the
sheriff asked.

“Yeah, he’s over there.” John pointed across the field of
shell casings and astounded soldiers to the Humvees behind the John’s car.
Leadbelly
was looking up at the sky, smiling.

“Let’s get him and get outta here while they’re all
distracted.”

They made their way around the back, to the other side of
the circle, where
Leadbelly
stood. The soldier
guarding him was in the middle of the vehicles, shooting upward.

“
Leadbelly
,
Leadbelly
.”
Sheriff Masters got his attention.

“Sheriff. John. Man, I told you
everything’d
be alright.”

“Let’s take one of these Hummers,” Professor Gentry said,
“get outta here.”

“
Naw
, man, this here’s my ride.”

The lights kept getting larger.

The soldiers stopped firing and stood frozen, confused,
staring up at the glowing dome a few feet above them. There was no wind.
Everything was still. The only movement was smoke rising from lowered gun
barrels.

Shaking his wrists,
Leadbelly
unlocked his shackles.

“You pick up a few tricks working Vegas, man,” he said,
handing Sheriff Masters the handcuffs.

“You get that from a magician?” the sheriff asked.

“No, man, the assistant.”
Leadbelly
winked. “C’mon, man, let’s get outta here. Unless you
wanna
hang out with these fellas.”

They followed him to the destroyed Saturn. A pair of
lights broke rank from the dome and descended into the ring of gun smoke. The
light’s source was a long, rectangular box, twenty-five feet long, ten feet
high, and seven feet across. Windows were on the front and sides. Its rear
lowered, leveled.

The box landed in front of them.

Along the bottom, large, metal spikes crept up the frame,
six on each side. They climbed the walls, connecting the box to two large metal
domes underneath. Between the RV and the metal domes, green lights glowed. On
the side of the box were three windows and a door with a small window. Two tan
stripes ran the length of its white frame, with one end of stripes meeting the
word ‘Indian’ at the rear. The other end forming a ‘W’ under the passenger seat
window.

‘W’ for ‘Winnebago’.

The flying Winnebago floated just above the ground, not
disturbing the earth underneath. The driver waved at them with a big, friendly
smile. He looked just like
Leadbelly
, big hair,
sequined jumpsuit. He honked the horn. The first few notes of an Elvis classic,
‘You Ain’t
Nothin
’ but a Hound Dog’, performed by car
horn, ended the silence. The side door opened and hinged metal steps unfolded.

“C’mon, man,”
Leadbelly
said.
“Let’s go.”

They followed
Leadbelly
past
bewildered soldiers gazing at the light dome or the flying Winnebago. John
shook his head and chuckled. When he saw the lights encasing them, he thought
their rescue would be a little more science-fiction, little green men in flying
saucers, and a little less Reno-road-trip.

The journal rested on the ground near John’s car, dropped
by Colonel Hollister at some point, an ancient text awaiting discovery. And his
gun. Several of the pictures were scattered next to it. John ran over, scooped
them up. He shook dirt from the photos before putting them in the journal, then
picked up the gun.

When John rose, Colonel Hollister stood between him and
the Winnebago. Colonel Hollister still held his gun, but it was lowered. He
looked tired, angry, like the fan of a second-place team. John walked to the
RV, and as he passed Colonel Hollister, the defeated officer clutched John’s
arm.

“This isn’t over,” he whispered. “You think running will
save you. I will find you.”

John jerked his arm free, took a few steps toward the
Winnebago.

“Your mother has her women’s group on Tuesday,” Colonel
Hollister said.

“What did you say?” John said, spinning around.

“They’re getting ready for their annual fund raiser.”

“You touch my mother…” John gripped and re-gripped the gun
in his hand.

“I believe they’re doing a flower show this year.”

“You son of a bitch,” he said, pointing the gun at Colonel
Hollister.

The side of Colonel Hollister’s mouth rose slightly. He
tossed his gun on the ground. It landed against a small grass cluster, growing
shrewdly between cracks in the earth.

John stepped closer to him, held the gun inches from
Colonel Hollister’s chest.

“There’s only one way you can stop me,” Colonel Hollister
said, his arms outstretched, surrendering. “Only one way for this to end.”

Colonel Hollister would never stop coming after him, never
leave him or his family alone. He would track John to Denver, ambush him
leaving work, or when he was in one of the city’s dark and lonely corners,
photographing a client’s wayward husband dressed like Rudolph at a Santa-themed
orgy. Or he’d go to John’s home some night while his mother was alone, force
his way in like he had at the hotel, and John would return to find his mother
tied up, or worse. Rooftop, he’d fight back. But it’d be a short fight. His
mom, Rooftop, everyone he’d ever cared about, they were all in danger. Unless
John stopped Colonel Hollister here. Now.

John flipped the safety and moved his finger to the
trigger. He took a deep breath. It would be easy. He could do this. It would be
just like when Rooftop took him to the shooting range, firing at a silhouetted
paper man. His finger twitched, then steadied. He squinted. But he didn’t
shoot.

A sudden tickle in his mind, like a hand had reached
across the car rubble and stupefied soldiers and was massaging a sensitive part
of his brain. He shook his head like he’d eaten ice cream too quickly, but the
tingling lingered and evolved into a voice with all the stumbling pauses, added
syllables, and slow drawl of the Deep South.

Leadbelly
.

John glanced over to the RV.
Leadbelly’s
mouth didn’t move, but he still spoke, like a ventriloquist without a miniature
companion. It was John’s first experience with telepathy and he found it invasive
and a little creepy, like
Leadbelly
was watching him
shower.

Leadbelly
transferred information about
Sagittarian technology into John’s brain. Not everything, but just enough to
make John lower the gun and look at it like it was an obsolete weapon.

“This is why I will always win,” Colonel Hollister said.
“You don’t have what it takes.”

“You don’t really understand what’s happened here, do
you?” John said.

“You can try to run, but I will find you. I will find your
family. Every last one of them.”

“You just got your ass handed to you by a bunch of Elvis
impersonators in flying
Winnebagos
.”

“I will firebomb that little town.”

“And they didn’t even fire a shot.”

“Turn the trailer parks into mass graves.”

“So, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to leave
us alone.”

“I will nuke the whole desert. Turn the sky purple.
Wherever you’re trying to hide.”

“Me, my family,
Leadbelly
,
everyone else in the journal. You’re going to head back to Los Alamos and leave
us alone.”

“You think anyone will be able to tell the difference
between the desert and a nuclear wasteland? I will find you, whatever it
takes.”

John motioned to
Leadbelly
.

One of the RVs, an old, two-tone Dodge
Travco
,
descended, floated behind one of the Hummers. Three aluminum beams covered the
square grill. The beams lowered and rested against the front bumper. A metal
tube extended from the square and began to spin and glow.

A black circle formed in front of the
Travco
.
It was twenty-four inches of nothingness, empty of light and matter and everything
else that filled the universe. Wind rushed into the emptiness and the Hummer
was sucked across the earth toward it. The end narrowed and stretched like dark
green taffy, and it began to spiral into the void. The vehicle twisted and spun
as it was drained away. And when it’d been sucked into the hole, the only thing
that remained was the stretches of dragged dirt marking the failure of three
tons of engine and armor against time-consuming gravity.

The darkness was pulled back into the metal tube, the tube
retracted into the RV, the grill rose, and light and sound and life returned,
replacing the emptiness.

“Was that…”

“A particle accelerator,” John said. “Every RV has one.”

“A sustainable black hole? That would require…”

“A shitload of energy. Now you know what you’re up
against. Anything you launch, send, try to detonate, will get sucked into
oblivion.”

“What are you proposing?” Colonel Hollister squinted.

“A truce. You stay away from us, we stay away from you.”

“Usually these types of pacts work when both sides have
some sort of deterrent, something keeping the other side from breaking it. What
assurances do I have that you won’t destroy us?” Colonel Hollister smirked like
he had something more devastating than the breach of an event horizon.